I think it'd be interesting if say, you have a soulstone in your inventory and therefore anyone in the raid who dies has the option of consuming it, including yourself ofc. It'll be up to raid leaders to say who gets so use it, but once used it goes on CD.

What if there was a bonus for correctly "guessing" who would die? Reduce the end gain of the ability and make it more functioning? If you Soul Stone the nuke DPS, and they get dead then thats a good call on your raid leader. They get to come back w/ 25% health/mana. If you have a shard that you can burn before they rez, then they can come back with the normal 30%. If you make the wrong call and perhaps the off tank dies to something, you can rip the soul shard from the stoned person and brez the dead player, but maybe only come back w/ 15% health/mana. Got a spare shard? Then they can come back with 20%. That way its not strictly better than BRez or SelfRez, and it would add great use of our new mechanic.

I think it'd be interesting if say, you have a soulstone in your inventory and therefore anyone in the raid who dies has the option of consuming it, including yourself ofc. It'll be up to raid leaders to say who gets so use it, but once used it goes on CD.

The point being that it would operate much like the current battleres, where it has to be targeted specifically, and making the choice of target matter.
The idea was to prevent any single class bringing a unique buff which ensures that inclusion into a group.
Where a position is earned by the player, and not the class or spec they play.
So far the battleres is a clear exception to that principle.
The soulstone in the current implementation is not what I consider remotely close.

Isn't there a cap in place as of 4.0.1 and will continue into Cataclysm on the amount of players in both 10/25 who can be Battle Rezzed. IIRC 2 in 25 and 1 in 10 per fight?? This change only really helps 10 man where you might not have a druid in the raid if the cap (unless the raids i've been in just had people failing at rezzing) is in place in Cata. Still a nice change nonetheless.

I was sort of wrong reading this post about Brez it says druids have a shared 30min cooldown. I have seen druids in our raids being unable to rez a second or third person after someone had already being rezzed earlier. However this post points out that it isnt really a cap more like a shared exhaustion between the druids. This may probably happen to warlocks aswell.

Obviously things like Rebirth can't just be handed to out to more classes unless we did something like a second exhaustion mechanic for battle rez or whatever. For now we're going to try the cooldown at 30 min again. In Icecrown's world of limited attempts, a 30 min cooldown likely meant you just cooled your heels until the cooldown was available again. In Cataclysm the hope is sometimes you'll have the benefit available but not every time, which scales back on how much of a game-changer it is.

An alternative to a longer cooldown for Rebirth is something where one druid using it would trip everyone's cooldown for a few minutes. That it's a bit gamey, but might solve the problem.

Also keep in mind that Rebirth is much more useful in today's game where people tend to die from massive damage. In a world where people sometimes die because the healers have run out of mana, then Rebirth doesn't buy you quite as much.

In a 25 player raid, you're most likely going to have a druid of some kind. The challenge is the 10 player raid. We don't want a druid to be required (just like we don't want a shaman to be required). You can argue that using Rebirth to recover from a death is just inherently harder in 10s since the opportunity cost is larger when 10% of your group is down, and yet another player is going to have to donate some time to bring that person back up. Beneficial, definitely. Mandatory? Maybe not.